Seven of world's Top 10 2021 busiest airports in China

Summary

• Figures for the world’s Top 50 airports by passenger numbers in 2020 compared to preliminary figures show that pandemic ‘recovery’ rates vary enormously.
• The biggest European airports grew by 25% to 50% in 2021, but London Heathrow lost even more passengers, and Paris CDG only just scraped over the line.
• Turkish and Russian airports continue to be influenced positively by domestic demand.
• 2021 recovery in the US (again domestically driven) was strong but not uniformly so, and varied notably according to COVID restrictions applied by different states.
• Wide variations in recovery in China; Guangzhou’s 15 minutes of fame as the world’s busiest airport has disappeared as quickly as a crashing Chinese Lantern.
• Beijing Daxing’s passenger statistics stand in stark contrast to just about anywhere else in the world.
• Bangkok’s losses are extremely severe and do not bode well for tourism in the country.
• Major airports like Toronto Pearson, Seoul Incheon and Hong Kong have vanished from the tables and may take a long time to return.  

The two worst years for civil aviation since 1945

By the beginning of January each year passenger traffic statistics for the previous year have been calculated at airports and it is possible to start to make comparisons with the year before that (in this case 2020).

It just happens that 2020 and 2021 were the two worst years for civil aviation apart from the wartime years – at least, up to now.

But in many cases airports did start to recover from the 2020 position and in some cases the recovery has been dramatic. (The corollary always is that in other cases it has not been).

The starting point for this survey is the end of year passenger figure for the Top 50 airports worldwide in 2020, together with the size of the decline in that year (there was a decline in every single case). Thereafter those figures are compared with the 2021 passenger figure, where it is known. In some cases statistics are still only available for reduced periods of time, such as Jan-Nov 2021, or Jan-Oct 2021.

Finally, the percentage increase in passenger numbers is given (in a small number of cases there was a further decline and this is discussed in the text).

To make it easier to work through the tables, the Top 50 airports have been segregated by region – Europe; North America; Latin America: Asia Pacific; Middle East. There is no table for Africa because there is no African airport in the Top 50.

Within each regional table airports are listed by their ranking in 2020. So in the case of the first table, for Europe, the first airport listed is Istanbul, which was the World’s 20^th busiest in 2020 when it recorded 23.4 million passengers for the year (having only opened in Oct-2018), which was a decline of 55% over 2019.

Thereafter, its 2021 passenger total is shown (37.2 million), which was an increase of almost 59% on 2020 (not on 2019).

2019 is often the benchmark for comparison, but not in these tables.

Europe

World ranking 2020	Airport	Passenger numbers 2020, millions	+/- 2019 (%)	Passenger numbers 2021, millions	+/- 2020 (%)	Notes
20	Istanbul	23.4	-55.1%	37.2	+58.9%
21	Paris CDG	22.3	-70.8%	22.7	+7.5%	2021 is Jan-Nov only
22	London Heathrow	22.1	-72.7%	19.4	-12.3%
29	Amsterdam	20.9	-70.9%	25.5	+22.0%
33	Moscow Sheremetyevo	19.8	-60.4%	28.3	+53.0%	2021 is Jan-Nov only
35	Frankfurt	18.8	-73.4%	22.1	+23.65%	2021 is Jan-Nov only
39	Madrid	17.1	-72.3%	21.1	+30.6%	2021 is Jan-Nov only
40	Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen	16.9	-52.1%	25.0	+47.3%
48	Moscow Domodedovo	16.3	-42.4%	23.0	+51.4%

Source: CAPA Airport Profiles.

Heathrow the only European or North American Top 50 airport to lose passengers in two successive years

Some notable outcomes in this table ought to be highlighted.

London Heathrow Airport is the only one of the European and North American airports in the Top 50 which lost passengers in both the years 2020 and 2021 (-12.3%). Its final total was less than a quarter of the pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019.

Again, that 12.3% reduction is compared to 2020, not 2019. As bad as the early months were, December would not have made any positive difference as the UK government introduced regulations early in that month that required UK arriving passengers to have a negative COVID-19 test before they boarded their inbound flight from most countries, in response to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, with a further one required within 48 hours; thus complicating travel arrangements (and costs) even more than they were. It was reported on 12-Jan-2022 that 600,000 passengers cancelled plans to fly from Heathrow Airport in Dec-2021.

The UK has suffered more than most countries in the way that aviation has borne the imposition of regulations. That is evident from the Heathrow passenger statistics and it has caused uproar in the airport community, with Manchester Airports Group (MAG) CEO Charlie Cornish and Edinburgh Airport CEO Gordon Dewar amongst the most vociferous. (Heathrow Airport’s John Holland-Kaye tends to take a lower profile; perhaps he won’t when he realises that Heathrow has slipped behind all of its main rivals – Paris CDG, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, the 'FLAP' airports – as well as Madrid, in 2021).

Indeed, MAG was one of a ‘consortium’ of air transport organisations, including Ryanair, that took legal action (unsuccessfully) over the British government’s ‘traffic light’ system, which affected travel to and from countries according to their infection count but which changed very quickly, earlier in 2021.

It is interesting to note that Istanbul has two airports in the European table, with the main Istanbul Airport having been the continent’s busiest in 2020 and with the biggest percentage increase in 2021. The other Istanbul airport, Sabiha Gökçen, which technically is in Asia, also experienced big gains in 2021.

Istanbul and Moscow feature, each with two airports in the European table, but small growth at Paris emphasises the harsh regime there

As numerous CAPA articles have pointed out, the strong growth in Turkish air traffic can be attributed mainly to domestic travel and a less restrictive entry regime connected to the coronavirus pandemic.

The same is true of Russia – and especially where domestic travel is concerned – and again the two main Moscow airports figure in the table, with gains of more than 50% in 2021 in both cases.

Apart from Heathrow Airport’s traffic loss, the smallest gain in 2021 was at Paris Charles de Gaulle, where it was just 7.5%. Again this is symptomatic of tough and at times draconian regulations imposed by the French government, including lockdowns which have been matched only by those in the Netherlands and Austria.

There are 15 North American airports in the 2020 Top 50, but Canada does not feature at all

Turning now to North America, where 15 airports were in the Top 50 in 2020 and all of them in the United States.

Canada, another country which has developed a fearsome reputation for lockdowns and stringent restrictions on interprovincial travel – let alone international travel – doesn’t get a look-in, despite Toronto Pearson Airport having been in position #32 in 2019. (It lost 74% of its passengers in 2020 and a further 90% in the early months of 2021).

Big 2021 increases at many US airports but little uniformity, as states apply differing COVID regulations or lack of them

Full-year statistics are not available at the time of writing, but in most cases they have been calculated through to the end of Nov-2021.

What is notable in the US is the size of the passenger increases across the country in 2021. The smallest increases, at 29% and 50%, were recorded in California, a state which has taken a rigorous stance on restricting movement, followed by New York, which also has. The biggest increases came in Florida and Texas, where a more liberal line was taken by state politicians, but of course the numerous tourist attractions of Florida, many of which reopened to the public in 2021, must also be taken into account in that reckoning.

North America

World ranking 2020	Airport	Passenger numbers 2020, millions	+/- 2019 (%)	Passenger numbers 2021, millions	+/- 2020 (%)	Notes     All 2021 periods are Jan-Nov except Atlanta, Orlando, Houston and San Francisco airports (Jan-Oct).
2	Atlanta	42.9	-60.2%	60.7	+69.4%
4	Dallas Fort Worth	39.4	-47.5%	56.5	+57.5%
8	Denver	33.7	-51.1%	53.5	+74.8%
13	Chicago O’Hare	30.9	-63.5%	48.7	+70.6%
15	Los Angeles LAX	28.8	-67.3%	42.8	+50.7%
18	Charlotte Douglas	27.2	-46.0%	39.6	+59.2%
24	Phoenix Sky Harbour	21.9	-52.6%	35.0	+74.8%
26	Orlando	21.6	-57.7%	32.7	+82.7%
31	Seattle	20.1	-61.3%	32.9	+76.5%
36	Miami	18.7	-59.4%	28.8	+90.0%
37	Houston G Bush	18.2	-59.5%	36.0	+85.0%
43	New York JFK	16.6	-73.4%	23.6	+61.3%
46	Fort Lauderdale	16.5	-55.1%	25.5	+72.8%
47	San Francisco	16.4	-71.4%	18.6	+28.85%
50	New York Newark	15.9	-65.7%	22.3	+66.7%

Source: CAPA Airport Profiles.

In every case except three – Los Angeles LAX, San Francisco and New York JFK – the percentage passenger increase in 2021 was greater than the percentage loss in 2020, while at Newark Liberty Airport the percentages were approximately the same.

In Miami the 2021 increase was in excess of 30 percentage points greater than the 2020 reduction. That speaks volumes about the way the coronavirus pandemic has been handled by different states.

Differing growth rates at the two largest Latin American airports in 2021 highlight changing pandemic response there

In the case of Latin America only the two busiest airports there figure in the 2020 Top 50, serving the two biggest cities (which are amongst the biggest in the world).

Latin America felt the full effects of COVID, especially in the crowded cities like these. Some countries managed to shrug it off in 2021 while others did not. The difference between the two growth rates in 2021 compared to the identical rates of loss in 2020 is testament to that.

Latin America

World ranking 2020	Airport	Passenger numbers 2020, millions	+/- 2019 (%)	Passenger numbers 2021, millions	+/- 2020 (%)	Notes
23	Mexico City, Juarez	22.0	-52.6%	36.1	+64.0%
30	Sao Paulo Guarulhos	30.0	-52.7%	21.1	+16.7%	2021 is Jan-Nov

Source: CAPA Airport Profiles.

Asia Pacific accounted for almost half the Top 50 airports in 2020

Asia Pacific is the location of the greatest proportion of airports in the Top 50 of the world’s airports in 2020, despite the acute impact of COVID-19 there.

There were 23 in all. That is hardly surprising.

According to the Valeriepieris Circle, which was first calculated in 2013, half of the world’s population lives within a 2,500 mile radius circle centred on the South China Sea (relocated to Myanmar in a later calculation).

Valeriepieris Circle

Source: By NASA - https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1dqh7d/after_seeing_a_recent_post_about_the_population/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98756377

Asia Pacific

World ranking 2020	Airport	Passenger numbers 2020, millions	+/- 2019 (%)	Passenger numbers 2021, millions	+/- 2020 (%)	Notes
1	Guangzhou Baiyun	43.8	-40.5%	40.3	-8%
3	Chengdu Shuangliu	40.7	-27.1%	37.8	-0.7%	2021 is Jan-Nov
5	Shenzhen Bao’an	37.9	-28.4%	36.4	-4.1%
6	Chongqing Jiangbei	34.9	-22.0%	33.3	+5.3%	2021 is Jan-Nov
7	Beijing Capital	34.5	-65.5%	32.6	-5.4%
9	Kunming	33.0	-31.4%	30.3	+2.6%	2021 is Jan-Nov
10	Shanghai Hongqiao	31.2	-31.7%	31.1	+11.1%	2021 is Jan-Nov
11	Xi’an Xianyang	31.1	-34.2%	28.1	+10.4%	2021 is Jan-Oct
12	Tokyo Haneda	31.0	-63.8%	21.9	-23.9%	2021 is Jan-Nov
13	Shanghai Pudong	30.5	-60.0%	30.7	+7.6%	2021 is Jan-Nov
16	Delhi	28.5	-58.4%	31.1	+25.5%	2021 is Jan-Nov
17	Hangzhou	28.2	-29.6%	27.2	+7.0%	2021 is Jan-Nov
25	Ho Chi Minh Tan Son Nhat	21.9	-49.0%	N/A	N/A
27	Zhengzhou	21.4	-26.5%	16.9	-1.0%	2021 is Jan-Oct
28	Jeju	21.0	-32.8%	25.8	+22.6%
32	Nanjing	19.9	-34.9%	16.5	-7.7%	2021 is Jan-Nov
34	Changsha	19.2	-28.6%	17.9	+15.6%	2021 is Jan-Oct
38	Seoul Gimpo	17.4	-31.4%	22.5	+29.1%
41	Xiamen Gaoqi	16.7	-39.0%	14.0	-6.8%	2021 is Jan-Nov
42	Bangkok Suvarnabhumi	16.7	-74.5%	4.4	-71.9%	2021 is Jan-Nov
44	Guiyang	16.5	-25.7%	15.9	+5.4%	2021 is Jan-Nov
45	Haikou Hainan Meilan	16.5	-31.9%	17.5	+6.2%
49	Beijing Daxing	15.9	+413.3%	22.7	+155.5%	2021 is Jan-Oct

Source: CAPA Airport Profiles.

China – no clear pattern to traffic development as virus variants hit some parts of the country harder than others

And of those 23 airports, the first eight are all in China, which accounts for 17 of them altogether.

The Chinese statistics make for fascinating reading. It is well-known by now that Guangzhou Baiyun airport became the busiest in the world in 2020, taking the #1 spot from Atlanta, although it hardly came out of left field, having been ranked #11 in 2019.

That position was a false one and possibly attributable to that region of China having not been as badly impacted as others by COVID, together with the fact that Guangzhou has an enormous ‘aerotropolis’ surrounding it, with a great deal of logistics activity affecting the whole country.

Furthermore, it was a passing phenomenon, and Atlanta has undoubtedly regained its position as the world’s #1 in 2021 with a close to 70% increase in passengers (while Guangzhou decreased by a further 8%).

There is no clear pattern to what happened in China in 2020. At more than half (nine of the 17) airports there was a traffic increase, including at both the Shanghai airports. Shanghai and Beijing were both heavily protected by the Chinese governments in 2020, which is why traffic fell so heavily there.

Beijing’s new Daxing Airport the only one in the Top 50 to grow in 2020 and it kept on growing in 2021

Beijing Capital’s passenger traffic continued to fall in 2021, by 5.4%, but that airport is influenced not only by the pandemic but by the emergence of Beijing Daxing, which opened in mid-2019. It was the only airport in the top 50 to grow at all in 2020 (+413% – but from a very low base, of course) and it has continued to do so in 2021, with growth registering +155%; again the highest growth rate across these top 50 airports.

Otherwise, China has been afflicted by the comparatively late arrival of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, followed quite quickly by the Omicron variant, for which locally produced vaccines are reported to be inadequate.

Xi’an’s plight is symptomatic of some areas, which are back into early 2020-style lockdowns

Some parts of China have again been locked down completely as this is written.

The city of Xi’an is a case in point. Just about everyone there is a ‘Terracotta Warrior’ right now, locked in isolation for up to two weeks.

The chart below is for the Shaanxi province, of which Xi’an is the capital, and shows the sudden rise in cases.

Source: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19

Xi’an’s airport witnessed a 10% increase in passengers in 2021, but a perpetuation of lockdown for several weeks will quickly put it back in the territory of 2020 (-30% or more).

These statistics alone demonstrate how patchy is the recovery in China, a country that can expect to continue to be impacted by the pandemic throughout 2022.

India’s Delhi Airport has clawed back a quarter of the passengers it lost in 2020

India is also in between variants, in that the Delta one was first detected there but the country is yet to be afflicted by the Omicron variant to the same degree, although cases have shot up in Jan-2022 to the same degree as in mid-2021 (0.5 million a day reported).

The only Indian airport in the Top 50 in 2020 (which shows how far it is still behind China, a country with a very similar population, and pandemic or no pandemic) is Delhi (#16), with 28.5 million passengers. Delhi lost almost 60% of them in 2020, but despite the Delta variant it managed to recoup 25% in 2021.

Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport is in a two-year-long freefall – the tourist industry is decimated

The shocking situation in Thailand is highlighted by the 74% reduction in passengers at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport in 2020 – the country’s major international gateway – followed by a 72% reduction in 2021.

Collectively, they are far and away the worst set of cumulative passenger statistics for the whole of these 50 airports.

It does raise the question of how Thailand will regain its status as a tourist paradise. For all its cultural charms its attractions as a ‘fun’ destination, particularly so in cities such as Pattaya, are one of the biggest draws. But most of its ‘fun’ ladies and gentlemen of the night (there were 27,000 of them in Pattaya) have gone back to their northern roots or to Laos or Cambodia whence they came, and homelessness has become a scourge.  The Tourist Authority faces a decade-long task to lure foreign visitors back, be they from China, elsewhere in Asia Pacific, Russia, Australia or Europe.

Seoul’s Incheon Airport has performed a better vanishing act than did Amelia Earheart

Two South Korean airports figure in the table: Seoul Gimpo, the capital’s domestic airport, and Jeju, which supports a major tourist resort. Both airports lost approximately one third of their passengers in 2020 but recouped a quarter or more in 2021.

But perhaps the most fascinating statistic of all concerns an airport that does not even figure in the tables, and which was ranked #14^th in the world in 2019 with 71.2 million passengers – Seoul Incheon. That airport, the country’s premier gateway by far, lost 83% of those passengers in 2020 and a further 73.5% in 2021 to leave it with just 3.2 million passengers, or 4.5% of what it had handled only two years previously.

How the mighty are fallen.

Much the same could be said about Hong Kong, the world’s 13^th busiest airport in 2019 but which disappeared from the table in 2020 when it went from 71.5 to 8.8 million passengers (-87.7%). In 2021 it slipped back again, tumbling to 1.2 million passengers (another massive reduction, this time of 86.3% and even threatening the future of Cathay Pacific. At least Hong Kong has an ‘excuse’ in that it is toeing the surely unachievable ‘zero Covid’ policy of mainland China, and under some duress to ensure that it does.

Big traffic losses at Dubai raise more questions about the need for the second airport there

Finally, there is just one table entry for the Middle East in the form of Dubai International, which, despite being subject to the demands of filling Airbus A380s (the 'Marie Celeste' of the 2020s), managed to stay in that table, in 19^th position in 2020.

In that year it lost 70% of its passengers, and a further 40% in 2021 (in 1H2021, the most recent figure available), to 10.6 million.

The perceived need for the Dubai World Central (Al Maktoum) Airport is now open to question. No statistics are available for that airport, but it only handled 1.6 million passengers in 2019. It was designed to handle 160 million.

Middle East

World ranking 2020	Airport	Passenger numbers 2020, millions	+/- 2019 (%)	Passenger numbers 2021, millions	+/- 2020 (%)	Notes
19	Dubai International	25.9	-70.0%	10.6	-40.00%	1H2021 only

Source: CAPA Airport Profiles.

Dubai World Central airport's main competitor in the region, Doha Hamad International Airport, part of the flexible and fast moving organisation that also includes Qatar Airways, may have fared better.

Hamad did not figure in the 2020 top 50 but has been in the past. Unfortunately, no passenger statistics have been provided by the airport since 2019, when it handled 38.8 million of them.